U.S. Conservatives Running Ads On The Pirate Bay, Canadian Gov't Pulled Ads From Site Last Month

Conservatives are using embattled torrent site The Pirate Bay, known for making movies and music illegally available, to run anti-Obama ads, reports a technology site with some knowledge on the subject.

According to an article on Torrent Freak, The Pirate Bay is used by millions daily, but the American Future Fund, a "secretly-funded conservative-leaning organization" is running an anti-Obama campaign on the torrent site.

The AFF, as reported by Open Secrets, raises money for candidates backing "conservative principles that sustain free market ideals focused on bolstering America's global competitiveness across the country." AFF has seven advertising campaigns on Pirate Bay's site, but one not mentioned is a large skyscraper ad which occasionally appears in the recent torrents section, and other areas of the site where the long, slender vertical ads are placed. Photographs of Obama are shown from his two presidential campaigns with the ad asking if Americans are "better off" after four years of "the same speeches."

The article adds that American Future Fund -- described as the "most successful big-spending Republican-leaning group" -- played a huge role in the outcome of recent senatorial and House of Representative campaigns with them having a 76 percent success rate in those races.

The Canadian government was also recently discovered to have used Pirate Bay for advertising. According to Cnet, the Department of Finance temporarily pulled their web ads after their banner ads were shown on the site along with ads for mail-order bride services.

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In an Sept. 26 article the Ottawa Citizen contacted the Department of Finance over the ads -- highlighting Canada's Economic Action Plan with the phrase "Find out what's in it for you" -- they replied via email stating they "did not purchase ad space on The Pirate Bay web site," but included "4 ad networks in our media buy." Those four were Canoe, Yahoo, Microsoft and Bell Media.

The Department of Finance reply added that while each of those four networks "use the most effective brand safety filters available and follow strict guidelines for all Government of Canada advertising campaigns," the four networks confirmed the site isn't owned by them and "the appearance of the ad on this site is unauthorized." Further investigations by the department revealed some banner ads appeared with an "ad choices icon," which Yahoo uses. The Department of Finance asked Yahoo to "halt all EAP (Economic Action Plan) ads until the matter is resolved."

Yahoo released its own statement claiming they did a "thorough investigation" and "was not responsible for the EAP ad" which appeared on The Pirate Bay. Instead, Yahoo told The Ottawa Citizen the ad could be traced back to Sympatico, who were "notified of the issue so they can take the appropriate actions."

Intriguingly, a new Wired story suggests Carl Lundström, one of the Pirate Bay's founders, is a far-right political activist who has donated money to extremist political causes in the past.